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It’s no secret to most of my friends that I’m a huge, and I mean HUGE, Trekkie. My Tumblr blog (where I am a much more active blogger than I am here because animated GIFs and fandom screencaps and a more collaborative blogosphere is really where I like to hang out) is almost entirely comprised of Trekkies and Star Trek-related content. I see Leonard Nimoy’s face come across my dashboard approximately once every 3 seconds, and I spend most of my time on Tumblr either talking about Trek or looking at GIFs and pictures from it. I’m a sci-fi writer and Star Trek is a huge part of my life – it always has been. And I’ve spent the last several years watching as the few remaining actors from a thing that I love maybe a little too much began edging nearer and nearer to elderly status. So I’ve been dreading this news for a while now. I just don’t think I fully appreciated how hard it would hit me until it actually happened. So it happened. And then I wrote this:

Originally shared on March 1, 2015

Yesterday was rough, guys. Let’s be real. None of us (very few of us in any case) knew him personally and probably most of us never even met him, but I know how we all feel right now. I feel like I just lost a grandparent. I finally got home from work last night and just let myself cry for a while.

One of my good friends here in Atlanta lost her mom (very unexpectedly, and way too soon) last week and I kept internally kicking myself and beating myself up for being so upset about this. I mean, how dare I get so upset over a celebrity death when someone is dealing with THAT. But then I had to stop and remind myself that grief is never a competition and my pain does not negate someone else’s.

Quite a few of you are new followers, so I’ve been meaning to do a sort of “about me” type post in relation to Trek for a while anyway, so here it is. LOL, is this my Trekkie Testimony? (A la the Southern Baptist church?) Can that be a thing? I think it would be really cool to read how people got into it, what first attracted you to it, etc. Continue reading →

So, I just got back from Momocon, an anime and sci-fi convention in Atlanta, Georgia, where I sold laser cat paintings and jewelry all weekend. Great times were had, and very little writing was done in the weeks leading up to the event, cause I had a lot of sparkly stuff to make. It happens. That being said, I’m pretty behind on writing and reading right now. According to Goodreads, I am 7 books behind schedule (SEVEN!) on my Goodreads Reading Challenge *weeping and gnashing of teeth*. I gotta get my butt in gear, you guys. Oh and add me on Goodreads if you like. That link goes to my profile. Continue reading →

I must apologize for a lack of book review or other updates this week. I’ve been pretty busy plugging away on my sci-fi project and re-reading Stephen King’s On Writing. Which… if you haven’t read… Is wonderful. Definitely at the top of my list of books all fiction writers should read. His no-nonsense approach to the craft is probably unmatched. I would hazard to say the only other work that comes close is Brenda Euland’s If You Want to Write. But as I intend to do full reviews of both those works at a later date, I won’t talk about that now. Instead, I’m here to talk briefly about space. Cause it’s awesome. And it’s one of those things that doesn’t seem to get any less mystifying or incredible no matter how much I “grow up.”

Last week I stayed up entirely too late two nights in a row to observe one of my favorite celestial events, the Perseid meteor shower. Saturday night was extremely cloudy in my, as Al Roker would say, neck of the woods… so when Sunday night showed us a clear sky, I excitedly called up a friend and invited her over to enjoy the show with me. As we lay on a pile of blankets in my front yard – she curled into a borrowed pillow, I bundled up in my Snuggie, I was struck by my own unwavering enchantment with the night sky. In many ways, I have changed and grown drastically beyond the child who first looked up and stood entranced by the stars some 20 years ago. But that fascination is just as great today, if not more so,
than it is in my earliest memory. I find that extremely compelling, especially considering the number of things that have changed in my life since then. When I first looked up into the night, I was a small girl who did not yet know what she wanted to be when she grew up. She didn’t know where she was going to live, or who with. She didn’t know what she believed, or why. There were many things she didn’t yet know about herself, or about the world at large. And looking outside of my own self, there was a time in the very near past that we as a species did not know the Earth revolved around the Sun. We didn’t know how to fly, we didn’t know if water might exist on another planet; that other planets existed! We didn’t know the age of the universe, or if it was expanding or contracting or static, or where it ended… IF it ended… We still can’t be 100% certain about some of these things… But one thing seems constant, at least for me… and that is the pure fascination that comes with looking up into it.

The more I learn, and the more I think I know… the more I realize… I don’t know shit. And anyone who claims to have all the answers is either stupid or selling something.

This awareness of an intrinsic inability to know is the cornerstone of a great number of my own personal beliefs. It is why I continue to be entranced. It is why I never stop being amazed by the beauty of the stars, or of the world in general. I’m grown up now, but in many ways I am still that little child looking up in awe at that which she cannot comprehend. I hope that never changes.

I’ve recently become really interested in the short story as a writing form. Nowadays it’s easy to forget that there was a time not so long ago that the “tale” was the leading form of published creative writing, and the novel did not yet exist.

In any case, if you’re looking for a great source of sci-fi short stories, here’s a journal for you: Analog – Science Fiction and Fact. Analog offers short stories from some of sci-fi’s greats, as well as up and coming writers. That’s the fiction. As for the fact, Analog also publishes non-fiction articles on topics pertaining to current events in the scientific community.

So go check it out. You can get Analog at Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, or subscribe through Analog‘s site to get your new copy delivered directly to you every month. It’s also available as an e-book for Nook or Kindle.

Reading short stories is a good way to get us thinking about writing short stories. If you don’t feel you’re ready to tackle a novel yet, or if you want a small side project to distract you from your novel, maybe try a short story. Too often I think it’s easy to forget that there are other forms out there aside from novels. There is still a place in the publishing industry for short fiction. And getting a few short stories published in journals like Analog might be a nice way to build a reputation for yourself when starting out as a published writer.